See more from this Division: Topical Sessions
See more from this Session: After the Last Ammonite and before the First Horse: Patterns of Ecological and Climatic Change during the Paleocene
Abstract:
The Laramide basins of the Rocky Mountain region contain a rich record of climate change, biotic diversity, and extinction including an exceptional record of the K-T boundary and recovery through the Paleocene to the PETM. The Denver Basin, including the Kiowa core, provides a nearly continuous record from Maastrichtian through early Paleocene, ideal for combined paleontological, geochronological and magnetostratigraphic studies. Our initial work has successfully produced high-precision U-Pb dates from small drill-core samples of volcanic ash linking paleomagnetics to the timescale; two samples within Chron C28r are 64.7 Ma. Combined with outcrop studies throughout Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota that include new dates from C31n (68.7 Ma) to the K-T boundary (66.1 Ma) and to C26r (59.3 Ma) at Polecat Bench, we are developing a new high-precision calibration of Paleocene time. This allows the linking of terrestrial sections with the high fidelity isotopic/climatic records from ocean basins which will lead to tests of cyclostratigraphic models and a better understanding of greenhouse climate dynamics and related terrestrial events.
See more from this Division: Topical Sessions
See more from this Session: After the Last Ammonite and before the First Horse: Patterns of Ecological and Climatic Change during the Paleocene